Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while
living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was
arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush
administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a
U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian
courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to
be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military
inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without
charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured.
In mid-2008, the U.S. Supreme Court -- in a case bearing his name -- ruled that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was unconstitutional because it denied Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus (i.e.,
to have the validity of the accusations against them reviewed by a
court). When, pursuant to that decision, Boumediene finally had a U.S.
court review the accusations against him in November, 2008, a federal
judge -- the far right, Bush-43-appointed Richard Leon -- ruled there was no credible evidence
to justify his detention (as well as the detention of four other
Algerian-Bosnian detainees) and ordered them all released immediately.
In other words, Boumediene spent almost 8 years in a Guantanamo cage,
being brutally tortured, despite there being no evidence (as Bosnian
courts had already found) that he had done anything wrong at all. I
wrote about Boumediene's story in detail here.
Eight months after Judge Leon ordered him freed, Boumediene -- in May, 2009 -- was finally released from Guantanamo
and went to France, which agreed to accept him because he has relatives
there. At the time he was shipped to Guantanamo in 2002, he had two
very young daughters. They are now 13 and 9 years old, and he
obviously doesn't know them.
ABC News' Jake Tapper, as
part of his traveling with President Obama this week, was in Paris and
commendably took the opportunity to interview Boumediene about his
ordeal, including the torture to which he was subjected at Guantanamo.
Tapper has written a detailed account here. Here is the less detailed though still substantial video segment that appeared this morning on Good Morning America and presumably will appear on other ABC News shows, including World News Tonight:
There are several vital points highlighted by all of this:
(1) The
central premise of all discussions about Guantanamo -- still -- is
always that the people who are detained there are
"Terrorists." They're the Worst of the Worst. Media figures and many
citizens just uncritically believe -- and constantly assert -- that
Guantanamo detainees are "Terrorists" even though they've had no trial
and it's just the Government's claim that they're "dangerous." We
repeatedly saw that premise asserted during the recent debate over
Obama's proposal of indefinite detention ("There are dangerous
Terrorists who he can't release!"). If this episode doesn't
demonstrate the extreme dishonesty of that premise -- of assuming that
people who have had no trials are Terrorists simply because
the Government claims this -- what would demonstrate it?
(2) Those who voted for the Military Commissions Act of 2006
-- all GOP Senators (except Chafee) and Democrats Jay Rockefeller, Ken
Salazar, Tom Carper, Mark Pryor, Tim Johnson, Bob Menendez, Frank
Lautenberg, Ben and Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, and Joe Lieberman,
plus 219 GOP and 34 Democratic House members -- were in favor of keeping people like Boumediene at Guantanamo indefinitelywithout any right of judicial review.
The only reason Boumediene was released is because the Supreme Court
(by a 5-4 vote) ruled that law unconstitutional and he was thus able to
have a court review the evidence (i.e., the lack thereof) against him.
Does anyone object to the term "moral depravity" being applied to those in Congress who voted to keep completely innocent people
in cages for life without any opportunity to have a court review the
accusations against them? If these members of Congress had their way,
these completely innocent individuals would still be encaged
at Guantanamo.
(3)
If Boumediene has been shipped from Bosnia to Bagram rather than to Guantanamo, then -- according to the Obama administration
-- he would not have had any rights at all to any judicial review. As
disgraceful as his plight is -- 7 1/2 years in a cage for no reason --
his case is actually one of the better ones when compared to those who
have been shipped from far away places to be imprisoned in Afghanistan,
where the Obama administration continues to argue they have no habeas rights of any kind.
(4) Those
who are defending Obama's proposal for "preventive detention" are, by
definition, risking further Boumedienes -- enabling the imprisonment of
those who have clearly done nothing wrong but who are nonetheless
deemed "dangerous" by the Government.
(5) In his
interview with Tapper, Boumediene talks about his desire to obtain some
compensation for the 7 1/2 years of his life that were obliterated at
Guantanamo. Thus far, however, he has been blocked from doing so --
first by the Bush administration and now by the Obama administration,
which continues to claim
that "state secrets" would be jeopardized if the victims of our torture
and wrongful detention such as Boumediene are permitted to have their
claims heard in an American court.
(6) Here is
Boumediene's description of what was done to him by the U.S. at
Guantanamo -- perfectly consistent with what other Guantanamo detainees
(and those at Bagram and elsewhere) have described, as summarized
by Tapper:
Boumediene said he endured harsh
treatment for more than seven years. He said he was kept awake for 16
days straight, and physically abused repeatedly.
Asked if he thought he was tortured, Boumediene was unequivocal.
"I don't think. I'm sure," he said.
Boumediene
described being pulled up from under his arms while sitting in a chair
with his legs shackled, stretching him. He said that he was forced to
run with the camp's guards and if he could not keep up, he was dragged,
bloody and bruised.
He described what he called the "games"
the guards would play after he began a hunger strike, putting his food
IV up his nose and poking the hypodermic needle in the wrong part of
his arm.
"You think that's not torture? What's this? What
can you call this? Torture or what?" he said, indicating the scars he
bears from tight shackles. "I'm an animal? I'm not a human?"
What
kind of person would deny that this is torture? And what kind of
person would argue that those who ordered that should be immune from
investigation and prosecution?
UPDATE: Just as is true of the numerous cases of detainee deaths, these two detailed accounts of what was done to the Algerian-Bosnian detainees at Guantanamo -- here and here -- demonstrate how delusional our torture debates have become ("it only involves 3 people who were waterboarded").
UPDATE II: John Cole makes a very important point about torture advocates and their Ticking Time Bomb routine.
